"Laura in Big Red Before Getting Busy Saturday"]

 Football season came to an end Saturday evening at Liberty for Big Red culminating a week of total confusion, frustration and perplexity. LU knocked off Stony Brook in the finale to earn a three way tie atop the Big South Conference. However, the automatic bid from the conference to the FCS playoffs went to Coastal Carolina who upset the Flames a week ago

. Intrestingly, the decision for the automatic bid went to the fourth tie breaker--amount of points allowed in conference games--and Coastal got the nod by four points over Liberty. They scored 45 points against the Flames. One touchdown less and Liberty would have made the playoffs.

The bottom line for Big Red is that despite not getting the extra playoff game we'd hoped for, Liberty rocks. Our business there increased by over 50% this year with one less home game. And, Liberty games now hold 1st, 2nd and 4th in my personal record books for football games. Liberty also continues to be undefeated in the mythical Funnel Cake Bowls against JMU.

Yesterday, now in 4th place in my books, wasn't easy. The kids are mostly gone home for the Thanksgiving holiday. When the gates opened at 1:30, there was nobody there. For an hour and a half, we did almost nothing. And I started to really worry. But when the crowd started rolling in, we got slammed and stayed that way for most of the game.

Tank and Laura were awesome as we were short one person. But we got through it and with reasonable service. Too bad we won't get that extra game.   Oh, well. Maybe next year.

 Basketball thus far is on the opposite end of the spectrum. We had three games at Vines Center this week, 2 women's and one men's, and they were all terrible. While I'm having fun with the crepes, and have been putting out a beautiful product, the volume just isn't there, nor am I drawing enough people to sustain lemonade sales at a rate to make it worthwhile.

So, I'm going to be forced to go back to funnel cakes, and either cook outside using runners to get the product into our stand, or possibly go to a frozen product that we can cook inside in a portable oven that doesn't require an exhaust system. I'll make those decisions before the next home game on Nov. 30.

For now, I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. I'll be spending it at Peggy's were we usually cook for like 40 people. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a last minute store to cook funnel cakes on Black Friday since I won't have a playoff football game.